http://www.usdieselengines.com/6000-...nerator-sound-
attenuated.htm

I was in Pep Boys to buy some new wiper blades for the stepvan/shop in
the rain. It was a big mistake......not the wipers, Pep Boys.....(sigh)

They had these diesel gensets on special for $1599.....big mistake.

I had to ask 5 people about it before a store manager finally showed up
to find out what the ruckus was about. Hey, I'm not buying just wiper
blades, you know! I wanted to HEAR it run. After more ruckus, and when
he figured out I wasn't leaving without hearing it run, he relented. Pep
Boys is a full auto shop with mechanics...car mechanics, but mechanics
none-the-less, and LOCAL within the required distance to invoke Federal
warranty law, if necessary.

Well, we rolled the HEAVY BEAST out into the shop on its 4 little wheels
(It's NOT going to roll across the lawn at 350#, EVER!) and, as I would
probably buy it if it sounded ok, I insisted we use Rotella T, not that
cheap car crap they were about to put into it...to fill it with oil.
They didn't have any diesel fuel, so I drove up the street with a can and
got 3 gallons of #2 to prime it and run it for a while. (If it wasn't
going to prime, of course, I wasn't going to buy...smart) The book,
(click the pdf from the website above for the book) said how to prime it,
which was about just filling the NICE FUEL FILTER then pull the
compression lever to open until the pump finally primed itself to take
the load off the starter. (Oh, we had to fill the DRY battery, first,
too.)

The mechanics had never primed a new diesel, so it was also a training
session in case someone ELSE bought the 2nd one they were going to sell,
someday. Fuel filter full, compression in release position, cranked it
for about 60 seconds. Closed compression handle and pressed the preheat
button for 3 minutes, unnecessarily I've found out, to make sure we had
enough heat. We did...it did....Took right off. We found 2 1500 watt
heaters the mechanics use in winter to load test it. At 3KW, it wasn't
even breathing hard....even new.

Well, needless to say, two wiper blades cost over $1600 at Pep Boys and
I'm ready for the Southeast USA hurricane season, 2007. It's powering
two window ACs and the rest of my little Oakwood 70 dock condo, INCLUDING
the electric water heater (220V) and Jenn-Aire Grille-Range without
maxing out. (I built a man killer for it. Pull the main house breaker,
then backfeed 120-0-120 from the genset's twistlock 240V 30A connector to
my 240V electric dryer outlet for now.) I'm trying to run the rest of
the diesel fuel out of it, tonight, so I can test it on FREE frying oil
thinned with mineral spirits the Mercedes diesels run great on by
tomorrow.....FREE POWER beats nuclear, even...(c; I'll install a
permanent 240V 50A outlet by its position this week to backfeed the house
for emergency power.

My neighbor came over to see it run and was stepping off how far it was
from where I'm going to chain it to the patio to his house...in case the
lights go out. No noise complaints about running the generator from co-
conspirators, here...(c;

ON TOPIC - Man this would make a nice little boat genset. All the
hardware is STAINLESS STEEL! The painted cabinet is galvanized under the
paint and there's corrosion protection all over it. The exhaust comes,
look at the picture, out a little pipe with a rain hat on it that would
be REAL EASY to plumb out a dry stack overboard! The heat all comes out
in one place, and isn't that hot it couldn't be just vented up through a
vent the size of a home dryer....or into a COLD CABIN or COCKPIT for you
Yankees tryin to stay warm! With the exhaust separately vented overboard
in a pipe, the cooling air from the little diesel would recover ALL the
heat from your diesel fuel investment in winter! The ultimate "diesel
heater"....that produces 5,500 watts of 60Hz SERIOUS POWER for living
aboard.

Oh, there's a "remote start kit" available for it, but no
autostart...It's a portable genset, you know. And it WASN'T $6000!

How do they make an electric start, automatic regulated, DIESEL genset
that retails so cheap?! Time will tell how long it will run before it
dies. We'll see......

Damn! $1600 for wiper blades! How awful!....(sigh)
Now I got 3 generators, again. Honda EU1000I, Honda EU3000is and the
DIESEL BEAST! After Hugo, I promised myself I would NEVER sit in the
DARK...ever again!

Larry, President
French Fried Power and Light, LLC